Electronic discovery (eDiscovery) refers to discovery in legal proceedings such as litigation, government investigations, or Freedom of Information Act requests, where the information sought is in electronic format. A discovery is used as a pre-trial procedure in a lawsuit in which each party, through the law of civil procedure, can obtain evidence from the other party or parties. eDiscovery is subject to rules of civil procedure and agreed-upon processes, often involving review for privilege and relevance before data are turned over to the requesting party.
In the United States of America, electronic discovery e.g. was the subject of amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), effective Dec. 1, 2006, as amended to Dec. 1, 2015. In addition, US state law frequently addresses issues relating to electronic discovery as well. Furthermore, other jurisdictions around the world also have rules relating to electronic discovery as well.
In general, electronic information is considered different from paper information because of its intangible form, volume, transience and persistence. Electronic information may for example be more complex than information provided by paper documents due to its encoding. Furthermore, electronic information may have to be processed or even transformed in order to be made accessible. In view of the extent of electronic information generated and handled today, electronic information becoming more and more important as evidence. However, the aforementioned characteristics of electronic information create special challenges for electronic discoveries. Hence, there is a constant need to improve the performance of electronic discoveries.